An Open Letter to the Citizens of Moraga, Article #4

By Lee Bren

Recommendations to address Moraga's flawed housing policies

Article #4: By: Lee Bren, Moraga Citizen

I am writing to you because I am a candidate for the Moraga Town Council. Previous articles were written on August 4, 11, and 18. This article will continue to build on my last article about intermediate and long-term recommendations concerning Moraga's economic climate and challenges.

Moraga has core infrastructure challenges including:
1. A diminishing town General Fund cash balance. Currently this balance is only $760,000, which is down sharply from $2.1 million in 2001. This is $46 per citizen in Moraga.
2. Dropping sales tax revenues. This is a direct result of economic stagnation, a general historical/current town policy of slow or no growth, and a lack of town investment in the human resources necessary to implement solid plans for economic viability and shopping diversity.
3. Property tax stagnation. Moraga has averaged only 27 new homes per year during the past 25 years. We have built no high quality senior housing or affordable workforce housing for our teachers/professors, fireman, policemen, for our own grown children, or housing for downsizing. Because our property taxes are stagnant, after inflation, we are effectively living on a 1985 town revenue base in the year 2004.
4. Deteriorating roads. We continue to significantly under spend to maintain our roads. As a result we now have $30 million of roads that need to be replaced.
5. Revitalizing our police department with reasonable work hours and a realistic retirement plan.

This article will focus on senior housing and workforce housing in Moraga. Moraga has a historical flawed local government housing policy because we lack workforce and senior housing. Moraga's current General Plan is written in such a way to allow and encourage senior and workforce housing. Moraga is now developing a Specific Plan to implement the reality of senior and workforce housing. Many of our Moraga teachers, professors, firemen, police officers, and local businessmen do not have options to live in our town. If we can build high quality, smaller more dense senior housing and workforce housing, (600-1700 square feet), the benefits become readily apparent:

1. Moraga lacks senior housing alternatives. Each time a senior resident citizen leaves Moraga, we all lose a bit of our history, vitality, continuity and local economic wealth. Senior housing would entail high quality rental units (non-assisted living), and smaller high density cluster townhouses or condos. Because of the physical size of the proposed new senior housing, the cost would be price-effective by Moraga standards. If a senior citizen elects to trade down his home in Moraga, their current home becomes available to younger homeowners, and the tax basis on that property significantly rises and the town receives significantly more property tax on that property. As these younger homeowners move in, they have a propensity to renovate this housing stock and the entire town receives the benefit of this. As seniors elect to move into the high quality senior housing, Moraga receives more property tax on this new trade down home. Because the senior now has freed up the equity in his previous home, he is more cash liquid, and he hopefully spends some of that liquidity in our town bringing in more sales tax for Moraga. Everyone wins with this strategy.

2. Workforce housing is in very short supply in Moraga. Our traffic congestion on our two major roads out of Moraga is partially the result of our flawed Moraga housing policy. St. Mary's college, for example, has over 600 employees coming to Moraga each day, and most leave our community each night. That is about 1200 trips in and out of Moraga each day from this one employer. Each one of those trips directly impacts Orinda and Lafayette. Now magnify that traffic effect by including our commuting policemen, firemen, businessmen, and teachers. I estimate the impact is over 2500 round trips per day. Since our workforce comes to our town anyway, why not build workforce housing here, and have them spend their money in our town. If we build more affordable workforce housing, the traffic effect getting in and out of town would be reduced. We could then, for example, attract the highest quality K-12 teachers, or the most involved businessmen, or attract long-term policemen/women to our town. It is also perfectly legal to carve out or dedicate a certain portion of workforce housing for our teachers, firemen, policemen etc. Our neighboring towns would be much better off, because we would not flood their roads with our workforce traffic each work day.

My recommendation: We need to finalize the proposed Specific Plan concept and extend School Street so our two shopping centers can be connected. (This involves an extension of only 2.5 blocks to accomplish this!) With the Specific Plan in place, we can develop higher density workforce and senior citizen housing behind the Safeway on primarily non-ridgeline low-valley land. Incorporated in this development would be the redevelopment/reconfiguration of the Moraga Shopping Center with pedestrian friendly diverse shopping alternatives that bridge both shopping centers. I also suggest we have a few town tours as well as models and map presentations by our town staff as the Specific Plan moves forward. We need to integrate more citizen and much more landlord input into finalizing the Specific Plan; the Morangans for Housing Options committee needs to definitely be involved.

I believe the end result would be a more diverse and revitalized housing stock, a more productive live-in workforce, better and more diverse shopping and retention of our valuable senior citizens. We can then have more revenues to fix our streets, pay our police and continue to replenish our cash reserves and liquidity and spend more resources on all Moragans. The ultimate end-game will be less traffic and a better quality of life for all Moragans. In short, this is a win-win scenario for all of Lamorinda!

Please email me with questions or comments to: leroybren@netscape.net Please join me in my political campaign so we can begin a renaissance in our town called Moraga.

Paid for by The Committee to Elect Lee Bren